Researching Jap planes?

[SGT Swanson]

If you have PDUs set to ON, how long does it take for an RD plane to make it to production if you expand one or more of it's plants? Or, does it really matter?

You can add this to to my questions in the Jap production thread I just posted to save time as well.

[AmiralLaurent]

WITP research works like that:

Research factories work roughly the same as "production" factories, ie a 100-point factories produces 100 airframes a month and uses the same amount of HI, and maybe of engines (?), as a "real" factory, but didn't produce any aircraft.

But each time 100 "research airframes" are produced, there is a roll to see if the release date of the AC is advanced of one month. The probablity this roll succeeds depends heavily from the dealy until the current release date: chances are almost nil one year before the planned release, and will then increase.

What I usually do is to halt at start of the game all research factories and to turn repair off for them. Then if I want to research a given type, my objective will be to have a "production" of 100 roughly 6 months before the normal release date. Usually the result is to have the release date advanced of one or two months. To have this production, depending of the number of factories involved, I set repair and production on 9 or 10 months before the normal release date.

[pauk]

ORIGINAL: AmiralLaurent

WITP research works like that:

Research factories work roughly the same as "production" factories, ie a 100-point factories produces 100 airframes a month and uses the same amount of HI, and maybe of engines (?), as a "real" factory, but didn't produce any aircraft.

Are you sure about that? I'm not sure that rd factories uses HI. Engines is not used in rd factories.

[NemRod]

IIRC, it was tested by Doktorblood (sp?) long ago (can't remember the thread): RD don't need HI nor engines.
Basically, when you do "research" you are just building your plants in advance. You don't pay more (supplies) than you would pay anyway, but you pay in advance. And you may be rewarded by your plane entering one or two months earlier in production, this latter part isn't clear at all and nothing is known for sure except that it DOESN'T work as stated in the manual.